Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power in a 1923 military coup with the tacit approval of King Alfonso XIII, suspending the Spanish constitution and dissolving parliament. He ruled as dictator for seven years, modeling his regime on Mussolini's Italy and promising to clean up Spanish politics, which had become paralyzed by corruption and regional separatism. Born in Jerez de la Frontera on January 8, 1870, into a military family, he served in Morocco, Cuba, and the Philippines before rising to the rank of captain general of Catalonia. His coup was initially popular. He ended the Rif War in Morocco through a joint French-Spanish campaign, built roads and railways, and launched infrastructure projects funded by foreign loans. Spain's economy grew during the 1920s boom. But Primo de Rivera governed without a constitution, censored the press, suppressed labor unions, and attempted to centralize authority over Catalonia and the Basque Country, which had distinct cultural identities and traditions of self-governance. Catalan intellectuals and Basque nationalists became implacable enemies of the regime. The military, which had supported the coup, grew restless as Primo de Rivera promoted loyalists over competent officers. When the global economic downturn hit Spain in 1929, the peseta collapsed and public works spending dried up. The regime had no democratic legitimacy to absorb the shock. The king withdrew his support. Primo de Rivera resigned in January 1930 and died in Paris six weeks later, broken and in exile. His dictatorship accelerated the collapse of the Spanish monarchy. Alfonso XIII's association with the regime destroyed what remained of royal prestige. Municipal elections in 1931 became a referendum on the monarchy itself, and the king fled. The Second Spanish Republic that followed inherited a country polarized between left and right, military and civilian, centralists and regionalists. Five years later, that polarization exploded into the Spanish Civil War.